Does the Marine Corps pour ice cold water at 5 am in the morning to their fresh wound penises?, No. This is what the Kalenjin boys go through folks.
Does the Marine Corps pour ice cold water at 5 am in the morning to their fresh wound penises?, No. This is what the Kalenjin boys go through folks.
Sam W. wrote:
Doesn't sound much different than Marine Corps basic training. Maybe there are some 20 something USMC veterans out there who have a 2:03 in them?
This post just shows how ignorant you are: you don't know what you don't know. The alternative to being a Marine is to be a fat coach potato. In Kenya, the alternative to being a marathoner is to live hand-to-mouth. If you have never had to starve or endure never-ending third-world stress and hardship for years on end, you really can't understand the psychology at all. If you have lived in poverty in a place with no opportunity for even a short time, maybe you will begin to get it.
The only comparison I can make to Kimetto's rise from seemingly out of nowhere is Jim Ryun.
Look at Kimetto:
-Starts running probably early 2010
-Runs a 61:30 half at altitude in Oct 2011
Ryun:
Sep 1962 - 5:38
Jun 1963 - 4:07.8
Jun 1964 - 3:39 for 1500m, 3 secs short of 1500m WR (and assuming a 3:56.3 mile equivalent, less than 2 secs off the mile WR at the time)
Coincidentally, 61:30 and 3:39 are very similar in the IAAF Outdoor 2011 standards. Not bad considering Ryun did this 50 years ago.
Initiation rites occur all over the world. In this one region of Kenya, you have a running culture where large #'s of people of the right body type are running from an early age to school and by adulthood in an extremely competitive environment with enormous amounts of money, by their standards, at stake, on dirt roads at altitude with the world's best training groups and very hard training.
Seargent Joe Friday wrote:
as bio passports become standard ... you will see more cases of guys running remarkable times, seemingly out of nowhere.
I have no horse in this race. Let's do a pro/con of this prediction.
Con: cycling has had the bio passports for a long time now, and they don't have cyclists showing up from out of nowhere, winning, and then disappearing.
Pro: but the team structure in cycling makes the two sports relevantly disanalogous, I suppose, since the teams and Pro Tour set-up basically forces cyclists to show up and race a lot (and in turn get tested a lot).
Conclusion: we'll just have to wait and see if there is this "lightning bolt" effect due to the bio passports in footracing. Though I admit I was pretty unhappy with last Oly's 1500 races for men and women and I am not alone in that. Interesting proposal: adopt a team system in footracing similar to cycling (national teams don't count since international competitions are not frequent enough).
Kent Fort wrote:
Sam W. wrote:Doesn't sound much different than Marine Corps basic training. Maybe there are some 20 something USMC veterans out there who have a 2:03 in them?
This post just shows how ignorant you are: you don't know what you don't know. The alternative to being a Marine is to be a fat coach potato. In Kenya, the alternative to being a marathoner is to live hand-to-mouth. If you have never had to starve or endure never-ending third-world stress and hardship for years on end, you really can't understand the psychology at all. If you have lived in poverty in a place with no opportunity for even a short time, maybe you will begin to get it.
1) Oh, okay, so you were a starving third-world dirt farmer. Cool, thanks for telling me how it is - always nice to hear something straight from the horse's mouth.
2) This is a terrible explanation, because plenty of the top Kenyans weren't exactly starving. Do we even know if Kimetto was particularly bad off? I mean, just because you don't live in the 'burbs in Connecticut and drive a Cadillac Escalade doesn't mean you're miserable. I mean hell, some people LIKE farming.
The only "enlightenment" I can provide is that none of us have any on this topic but people will have opinions. What Kimetto does after four years proves nothing about what other Kenyans can do. Jack Foster was running 2:12 marathons at age 38 four years after he got into the sport so it is possible to run very fast in that span of time.
You do know that the lack of resources and facilities is the main factor for why they don't excel in other sports right?
How in the hell are they going to find a 50m pool in the middle of Ethiopia or Kenya? $5000 bikes? Seriously?
If they have the same resources as the western world ... let's just say that things will be different.
HRE wrote:
The only "enlightenment" I can provide is that none of us have any on this topic but people will have opinions. What Kimetto does after four years proves nothing about what other Kenyans can do. Jack Foster was running 2:12 marathons at age 38 four years after he got into the sport so it is possible to run very fast in that span of time.
And Jack Foster was endurance trained prior to that, i.e. cyclist, so not that surprising.
I suspect Kimetto also has some kind of endurance base, be interesting to know what it was/is.
George Atlas wrote:
But they do have the head start with genetics. And growing up at altitude. Its always been obvious.
Couple that with the life at altitude and the motivation they will always dominate.
"But they do have the head start with genetics." WRONG.
Genetic testing has shown no advantage present in Kenyans.
"Couple that with the life at altitude" WRONG.
Testing of Kenyans showed that because they live AND train at altitude, it actually has a detrimental effect on their performance.
"the motivation they will always dominate." RIGHT.
Confidence and hard work do a lot for anyone.
Please watch the documentary Running For Life which features testing of Kenyans. It's available on youtube.
of course they have a genetic advantage. just like a ashkenazi
jews who have received the nobel prize in physics insanely
many times and are dominating physics (string theory, particle physics).
Sam W. wrote:
Kent Fort wrote:This post just shows how ignorant you are: you don't know what you don't know. The alternative to being a Marine is to be a fat coach potato. In Kenya, the alternative to being a marathoner is to live hand-to-mouth. If you have never had to starve or endure never-ending third-world stress and hardship for years on end, you really can't understand the psychology at all. If you have lived in poverty in a place with no opportunity for even a short time, maybe you will begin to get it.
1) Oh, okay, so you were a starving third-world dirt farmer. Cool, thanks for telling me how it is - always nice to hear something straight from the horse's mouth.
2) This is a terrible explanation, because plenty of the top Kenyans weren't exactly starving. Do we even know if Kimetto was particularly bad off? I mean, just because you don't live in the 'burbs in Connecticut and drive a Cadillac Escalade doesn't mean you're miserable. I mean hell, some people LIKE farming.
1. You are welcome.
2. It is a perfect explanation. There is no social safety net in Kenya, beyond your own family and maybe your church. In America, the worse thing that could happen is that you make up some bogus claim about a disability and sit on your but watching marathons of the tv show variety.
Kent Fort wrote:
2. It is a perfect explanation. There is no social safety net in Kenya, beyond your own family and maybe your church. In America, the worse thing that could happen is that you make up some bogus claim about a disability and sit on your but watching marathons of the tv show variety.
If you are lucky enough to have a family that will take care of you, that is much preferable to government aid. You obviously have a distorted view of what it's like being poor in the USA.